-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The birthday girl every Fourth of July is the Statue of Liberty , the image on party napkins , on parade floats and the backdrop for fireworks displays in New York Harbor . She is the ultimate American symbol , a gift from France to the United States , it is said , implying that she was a gift given government to government . The truth is , she could more correctly be called a gift from one artist to the world .

In an era when we have given up the desire to astound each other simply to please or provoke wonder , this an important distinction .

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dreamed up this colossus back in the late 1800s . A middle-tier statue maker , he took his plan to Egypt and pitched a colossal robed slave holding up a torch to stand at the mouth of the Suez Canal . When that deal failed , Bartholdi brushed off the design and brought it to America , all on his own dime . He went door to door , office to office , presenting the vision and meeting with rejection .

But with the well wishes of a few staunch supporters , he kept driving onward , winning other commissions to pay the bills and building Liberty piece by piece in Paris , paying for each section as soon as he could drum up donations . He sought out all of his engineering collaborators on his own . He dreamed up entertainments to raise monies through ticket sales .

And it was he who yanked the massive French flag from her face at her unveiling in 1886 . He threw himself into the arms of a friend and wept .

Liberty remains . Bartholdi is essentially unknown . You say the name Bartholdi , and even savvy New Yorkers look blank .

Bartholdi could foresee that future . When he visited Liberty just before leaving America that year , he acknowledged , `` She is going away from me . '' He had lost the sense that she was his , a feeling he had possessed when climbing over her copper structure in Paris . She would be given to future generations .

Bartholdi created one of the most powerful trademarks in history and is largely unknown . I suppose few people know the name Jim Schindler either , the man who designed McDonald 's Golden Arches -- and that was pretty powerful , too . But still it seems a bit amazing Bartholdi should go largely unrecognized for his work of art .

We might not feel constantly awestruck that a work 305 feet tall -- taller than the ancient Colossus of Rhodes , whose legend lasted millennia -- mingles with us . But Liberty , barring emergency closures for events such as Superstorm Sandy , attracts about 3.8 million tourists a year . Every year , she flutters the hearts of people hiking to her head , as surely as she fluttered the hearts of immigrants arriving in the New World . Her power remains .

She is an echo of an era when people sought to produce wonder and ecstasy in their fellow citizens purely for the sake of creating a fabulous artifact of human possibility , even if their personal fame might vanish before the work did .

Astounding and delighting one another was the vogue . Eiffel made his tower , just after he designed the scaffold for Liberty 's interior . Thomas Edison proposed a colossal phonograph inside Liberty to make her `` talk . '' Inventors brought their products of genius to kaleidoscopic World 's Fairs to enchant viewers as much as serve merchant interests .

`` When I discover a subject grand enough , I will honor that subject by building the tallest statue in the world , '' Bartholdi said in his 20s , 30 years before he unveiled his statue .

It is hard to imagine anyone nowadays either demonstrating the patience to wait for an idea to strike or pursuing the goal of honoring a subject ... a concept . Ideas are now considered important only if they are flypaper for money , not precious , heaven-sent gifts . Good ones are catchy or addictive . Few people try to invent something that will make the consumer say , `` Look what humankind has achieved ! '' Our popular entertainments titillate or intoxicate .

I worry we have lost our sense of the importance of sharing our talents for the common good , partly because there is so much economic pressure put on the middle class , with stagnating wages and rising costs for housing , food and more . The middle class , in my historical research , seems the group from which big ideas have long sprung . And we compound the pressure by stealing the work of our inventors and artists , leaving them no means to actually survive .

We weigh down our potential visionaries and inventors with college debt . When they begin to produce , say , music , we take it from them and pay fractions of pennies to listen to it , even as we pay stockbrokers at the lowest end $ 7 to $ 10 to make a trade .

We underpay or do n't pay for a journalist 's writing . We require so little public art or decorative art that those artists of ours who do n't rise into the filament-thin clique of superstars only survive by working at many other jobs . Anyone not connected to a company is required to double pay Social Security taxes as well as burdensome health insurance premiums -LRB- even with Obamacare -RRB- .

So there is no time for tinkering or deep pondering unless you work for Google or Tesla or SpaceX . Putting our geniuses under the corporate umbrella means we craft amazing inventions , but before we can gloat that mankind has achieved something great for mankind , we monetize the hell out of the invention , putting it out of reach for most or , in the case of , say , medical inventions actually turning those great discoveries into financial burdens

Now I know that Bartholdi created his work for more than altruistic purposes . His ego fueled him .

Showing his own anxiety , he got the Statue of Liberty copyrighted with the hope that he could earn income from the commercial use he knew was coming -LRB- he was savvy to what he considered the less appealing part of America -RRB- . When he could never collect , he groused at his financially tight existence .

But because he had received cheerleading in his youth from his mother , who encouraged his pursuit of grander visions , he could at least rest easy that he got to see the work complete and knew it would survive him .

Nowadays , if we love our kids , dare we encourage them to create something vast and important that might last centuries ?

Unless their creation was a money magnet , encouraging such an undertaking would almost be like condemning them to potential extinction . In Bartholdi 's day , you could try something big and if it did n't work out , you would have your disappointment , but you could still pay the doctor in barter . You could suffer setbacks and failures and know that you would at least get by .

It 's interesting to me that in my neighborhood in Brooklyn , the artist Kara Walker has installed a giant sugar Sphinx in an abandoned sugar factory that is soon to be turned into pricey condominiums . I 'm sure the real estate agents love it as a lure for those future condo sales . Regardless , the lines stretch down the block every day , every hour , for weeks now and visitors speak to reporters who ask about their intense emotional and intellectual reactions to this massive otherworldly sculpture .

People flock to see this colossal Sphinx . They come because it 's a happening but they also come , I believe , because they are so starved for the work of a person trying to impress them and to amaze them without a corporate entity intervening to make a bundle on it .

They wait on noisy Kent Avenue for a fleeting taste of this rarity , for a sign we might still have space for human invention ... that we can all share in what humanity can achieve .

@highlight

Elizabeth Mitchell : Statue of Liberty birthday girl of July 4 ; few recall her creator

@highlight

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi built Liberty , a labor of love , piece by piece with donations

@highlight

She says creating art just to reflect a concept , wow later generations a lost notion

@highlight

Mitchell : People starved for creations made just to amaze them , not to draw money